7 Tips for editing on the go

Today I’m letting you all in on a little mini secret of mine, how I edit my photos on the go whilst I am shooting on location. When my clients needs photos edited ASAP I need to have a way of doing this quickly and efficiently for them, this is usually so they can upload the photos directly onto instagram. When you just get the shot and know that you want to share it then and there reminds me of how it felt when we all first started blogs and downloaded instagram.

A quick edit was needed recently on my LFW shoots with the wonderful Collyer Twins. So what better chance to show you the photos I edited on the go for the ladies and give you my top tips on how I do so efficiently.

Get yourself a SD/CF to USB-C card reader – This product is an absolute game changer!! You can pop your camera memory card whether it’s CF or SD into this card reader which plugs straight into you iPhone, the reader that I use is linked here. There are of course Android versions too, I’ll link an Android SD reader here. I can’t seem to find a CF version annoyingly but I bet there is one somewhere. This can save you time and extra carrying weight so you don’t always need to bring along a laptop, possibly an external hard drive and charger. This handy tool fits in your camera bag or even handbag if you just happen to capture something on your camera that you know you want to edit immediately!

Download the Colourtone app – This app was created by Australian photographer Bonnie Cee and it is my ultimate go-to app for photo editing especially on the go for a shoot as it can edit RAW files straight from your camera to your phone, technology really can be ingenious! I love the variety of presets that are available on this app and a lot come free when you download and then there are even more to purchase if you wish. I haven’t actually purchased any, as I have a few faves that are from the free presets. I honestly cannot tell you how many people I’ve recommended it to since I was told about it by ‘We Are Twinset’ who had it recommended to them by the talented Rebecca Spencer. Colourtone is my absolute favourite editing app at the moment and has been for the last 6 months or so, but I always love hearing about new ones. So if you’re using one you can’t imagine life without drop me a message to tell me what it is. My other favourite editing apps are Snapseed and VSCO.

When editing on your phone always remember to check whether the brightness is turned up to the max. A simple tip but the amount of times I’ve edited a shot and thought it looks a little dark and then realised the brightness is turned down. It could make a world of difference to your image, the difference being an image of the right brightness and another where you cannot see any detail within the image because it’s too bright.

If you’re shooting with someone, once you’ve downloaded the photos to your phone, get them to look through the shots and favourite the ones they like. That way you can filter the ones you need to edit immediately and leave the others for when you upload to your computer a little later.

Carry a portable charger with you. If you are editing on the go especially large RAW files from your camera it drains your phone battery very quickly! Plus having the brightness of your phone on full won’t help either so remember to turn it down again after you’ve finished editing and conserve your battery life.

The most effective way I found to send photos to clients very quickly is via Airdrop or bluetooth. This is slightly harder if you’re doing it iPhone to Android but still possible. Even easier if it’s two of the same phone, airdrop on iPhone works very quickly and doesn’t affect the quality of the images either. Whereas you may not know if you send a photo via WhatsApp it immediately decreases the quality, which can be rather frustrating as we always want our photographs to look their very best! This tip is obviously only useful if you are with the client/ person you’re shooting with and need to send the edited photos to them immediately then and there, however if your client is not in a rush for them to be sent to them then I’d recommend using WeTransfer or dropbox to send the edited photos.

Finally after you’ve finished your shoot and the photos are downloaded to your computer or hard drive and all backed up, delete the original photos from your phone, especially if they’re RAW files they will take a lot of space up on your phone and once you’ve deleted them, remember to then delete them from your recently deleted folder too so you can actually gain the space back on your phone.

I really hope you enjoyed this post and found it helpful, if you liked the post be sure to let me know and then I’ll be able to create some similar posts in the future for you lovely lot.

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2 Comments

These are such great tips Amber! I definitely want to invest in the little SD to USB-C reader, especially as my Mac can be so cumbersome to carry around with me. Also love the tip about changing the brightness on your phone, I’m terrible at this. Do you do the same on your desktop too? I never know what the best ‘default’ is when it comes to editing as things can look so different from device to device. x

Hi Amber! Thank you for sharing these fantastic tips! I recently invested in the SD to USB-C reader and it’s definitely a game changer. Having a camera that has wifi capability which enables transfer of photos from the camera to a phone helps too!

If you don’t mind me asking, I would love to know your workflow too. I’ve yet to find a systematic workflow to manage my photos – I have them on my laptop, on my iPhone not to mention on an external drive too and sometimes they also remain on the SD card far too long. It definitely makes finding / searching for photos quite a task, not to mention it’s a shame to have photos that may not see the light of day. I’d love to get practical tips from you. x